Yul Brynner

We all loved Yul Brynner as a person and for the many great performances he gave us over the years. But there was one important performance that he may never have given. Brynner talked about it in a recent television interview. He mentioned that he very much wanted to make an anti-smoking public service spot for television that would explain his lung cancer. He said that he smoked five packs of cigarettes a day for many years and now viewed his habit as a form of slow suicide.

With his shaved pate, sonorous voice and commanding presence, Yul Brynner mesmerized theater and film audiences from the 1950s through the 1970s, winning a Tony Award and an Oscar as the king of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "The King and I. " He also played Rameses II in "The Ten Commandments" and a hired gun in "The Magnificent Seven. " Brynner, who died of lung cancer in 1985, also was an accomplished photographer. His daughter, Victoria Brynner, has edited the lavish coffee-table book "Yul Brynner: A Photographic Journey" ($150)

With his shaved pate, sonorous voice and commanding presence, Yul Brynner mesmerized theater and film audiences from the 1950s through the 1970s, winning a Tony Award and an Oscar as the king of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "The King and I. " He also played Rameses II in "The Ten Commandments" and a hired gun in "The Magnificent Seven. " Brynner, who died of lung cancer in 1985, also was an accomplished photographer. His daughter, Victoria Brynner, has edited the lavish coffee-table book "Yul Brynner: A Photographic Journey" ($150)

Yul Brynner spoke from the grave Wednesday, warning "now that I'm gone--don't smoke," in an eerie anti-smoking commercial released four months after the star of the "King and I" died of lung cancer. "Now that I'm gone, I tell you: Don't smoke, whatever you do. Just don't smoke," Brynner says in a throaty voice in the American Cancer Society television commercial. Brynner, who for a time smoked five packs of cigarettes a day, died Oct. 10. He was 65.

Yul Brynner, who with shaved head and regally haughty presence played and replayed the starring role in "The King and I" for more than 30 years, died early today in a New York Hospital. He was 65. With him when he died at 1 a.m. at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center were his wife, Kathy Lee, and his four children, said Josh Ellis, the actor's spokesman. "He died of multiple complications that came as a result of what was originally cancer," Ellis said. "He faced death with a dignity and strength that astounded his doctors.

The world knows Oscar winner Yul Brynner as the bald larger-than-life star of "The King and I," "The Ten Commandments," "Anastasia" and "The Magnificent Seven," but to his family and friends, Brynner was also an accomplished photographer. And it is this side of the actor that is revealed in "Yul Brynner: Photographer," a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book written by Brynner's daughter, Victoria Brynner. The book, published by Harry N.

"Mahvelous!" Billy Crystal. A&M. Beginning last year on "Saturday Night Live," Crystal--until then a merely likable comedian--allowed his more outrageous side to come out, and it's been all for the good. Here are some of his most memorable characters--including the ingratiatingly smarmy "Fernando" ("You look mah-velous"). Crystal's timing fails him in only one place here: the album has a sketch poking fun at--ouch!--Yul Brynner.

Re "One From the Heart" [April 3] on Stefanie Powers and the current production of "The King and I," one "Anna" omitted from the list of "Annas": Patricia Morison. After Gertrude Lawrence passed on and her standby, Constance Carpenter, took over the lead for a very short time, Morison joined Yul Brynner for a two-year tour. I was fortunate to have seen this production. Many years later when Brynner was asked to re-create a number from the production for a Tony show, he phoned Morison to ask her to come to New York to appear with him. Luckily, this number, "Shall We Dance," was taped and appears in the "Broadway's Lost Treasures" set on DVD. Truly a treasure.

I weep as I write this, having just read your coverage of Warren Zevon's coda, "The Wind" ("One Last Take," by Geoff Boucher, Aug. 17). It seems so fitting, so true to his body of work, how love, friendship and wry artistic expression endure beyond the fragility of flesh and blood. What a gift of life Zevon gives us in the face of his own death. Eric Herman Fullerton With all sympathy and respect to Warren Zevon, not one mention was made of his terminal cancer's cause.

The world knows Oscar winner Yul Brynner as the bald larger-than-life star of "The King and I," "The Ten Commandments," "Anastasia" and "The Magnificent Seven," but to his family and friends, Brynner was also an accomplished photographer. And it is this side of the actor that is revealed in "Yul Brynner: Photographer," a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book written by Brynner's daughter, Victoria Brynner. The book, published by Harry N.

Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" (1956) is an elephant of a movie. Maybe woolly mammoth is more apt. They don't make them like this anymore. There's no way they could. Perhaps there's no way they should. This 219-minute religious epic--being shown tonight as part of the Saddleback College/Edwards Cinemas classics series in Mission Viejo--was intended to be the spectacular to out-spectacle all spectaculars.

The history of jazz comes to most of us through books. But Bradley Smith doesn't need them. He has a better, more accurate source of information: his own life. Smith's black-and-white photos of jazz musicians, most of them taken between the late 1930s and early '50s, are on view through June 10 in a second-floor conference room at the new Price Center on the UC San Diego campus. Smith, now 78, spent his formative years in New Orleans, catching the waning days of Storyville, the legal red-light district.

Re "One From the Heart" [April 3] on Stefanie Powers and the current production of "The King and I," one "Anna" omitted from the list of "Annas": Patricia Morison. After Gertrude Lawrence passed on and her standby, Constance Carpenter, took over the lead for a very short time, Morison joined Yul Brynner for a two-year tour. I was fortunate to have seen this production. Many years later when Brynner was asked to re-create a number from the production for a Tony show, he phoned Morison to ask her to come to New York to appear with him. Luckily, this number, "Shall We Dance," was taped and appears in the "Broadway's Lost Treasures" set on DVD. Truly a treasure.

Brown's survey of recordings by celebrities who are not celebrated as singers missed one of the best: Yul Brynner's 1967 Vanguard album "The Gypsy and I," in which Brynner's mahogany baritone mixes stunningly with his guitar work and that of his long-time music partner, Aliosha Dimitrievitch. I've had the album 20 years and still try to listen to it every week or so. I'd like to have read a little more about the cover-pictured albums by Jeff Chandler and Robert Mitchum. Chandler had a Vegas act for a while and, while Mitchum's calypso record may not be much, the one you pictured, "That Man Robert Mitchum Sings," covers Dean Martin territory almost as well as Dino.

Brown's survey of recordings by celebrities who are not celebrated as singers missed one of the best: Yul Brynner's 1967 Vanguard album "The Gypsy and I," in which Brynner's mahogany baritone mixes stunningly with his guitar work and that of his long-time music partner, Aliosha Dimitrievitch. I've had the album 20 years and still try to listen to it every week or so. I'd like to have read a little more about the cover-pictured albums by Jeff Chandler and Robert Mitchum. Chandler had a Vegas act for a while and, while Mitchum's calypso record may not be much, the one you pictured, "That Man Robert Mitchum Sings," covers Dean Martin territory almost as well as Dino.